sobota, 19 czerwca 2010

Chapter Four - Importation of such games into Console Consumer Market

It is obvious that "games with better story" had more "citizenship rights" to be imported over to the console market than cheap-sex games.

One of the first ero-games to be imported over to the console was Elf's "Dragon Knight 2" which was released on the PC-Engine.

To be imported meant several things:The game was successful enough that it could be sold on consumer consolesBut of course, there are tighter restricitions on console systems, so erotic sex scenes need to be cut out

On the plus side, the consumer console market had some pretty good gaming systems that they were capable of doing something that the ero-games for the PC couldn't back then - add character voices.

Elf's "Dokyusei" also followed in a similar fashion - first on the PC-Engine and then on the Sega Saturn. F&C's "Pia Carrot" series lead the path by importing much of their series onto the console format. And Leaf attained much success to non-PC users by heavily promoting their "To Heart" game onto the Sony Playstation.

During the mid 1990s, the console game industry was moving from the triad lead of Super Famicom/Sega Megadrive/NEC PC-Engine towards the dual superpowers of Sony Playstation vs Sega Saturn. During this time, the PC-Engine was becoming a dying format in which it managed to survive as long as it could by utilizing its voice capability on its CD-ROM2. The Sega Saturn and its successor, the Sega Dreamcast will inevitably follow a similar pattern as well. The last Dreamcast sale was on December of 2001, but still importation of ero-games onto the Dreamcast still continues to this date, such as:Tsuki wa Higashi ni, Hi wa Nishi ni ~Operation Sanctuary~ (2004.6)Patishe Nyanko ~hatsukoi wa ichigo aji~ (2004.9)Suigetsu ~Mayoi gokoro~ (2004.10)

What is happening to the industry as a whole is that they began to understand that hard-core maniacs are suckers:

An ero-game is released on the Windows platformIf the game was successful, it will be imported onto the Dreamcast with sex scenes cut out. As an added plus on removing sex scenes, new scenarios, event graphics, and possibly a new character may be introduced on the Dreamcast versionWait several months later, and release the game onto the more popular PS2 format. Some alterations are made, perhaps the OP theme might be changed to distinguish it from the Dreamcast version. As a plus for those who bought the Dreamcast version, they might add some more new scenariosAfter several months, they will re-import all the added items from the consumer console release back into the PC format as an "all ages version"Or they may re-import all the added items from the consumer console release and re-add the sex scenes to all the new characters that they added.

Hard-core maniacs are suckers. They will buy all of them. Each time a new "release" is made, the makers add something special into them that drags Mr. Yukichi (the guy on the 10,000 yen bill) out of our wallets.

Here's an example of some extreme manipulation:An ero-game called "Green Green" was releasedThey decide to release two different consumer console versions of "Green Green" - one for the XBox titled "Green Green ~Kane no Iro Dynamic~" and the other for the PS2 "Green Green ~Kane no Iro Romantic~." Both had new extra characters on them...except that the added character on the XBox version was different from the the added character in the PS2 versionHOWEVER! Since the XBox isn't doing so well in Japan, they've decided to drop the XBox version "Green Green ~Kane no Iro Dynamic" all together and release that for the PS2 insteadBUT! They still released the original PS2 version's "Green Green ~Kane no Iro Romantic" as wellHence what you ended up was that you had two games with the same title on the same PS2 platform, with each version having two different extra characters than the other!Basically, what the softhouse is saying is that "if you want to play the two new characters, you have to buy both versions"Hard core maniacs are suckers. We know it ourselves. They know it all too well too. But then, what the softhouses are doing is nothing more than following basic Japanese marketing strategy that had developed since the 1970s - milking money out of people who will buy them (I believe that the American anime distributor ADVFilms is practically following this marketing strategy from what I have been reading on this board for the past year or so).

What is happening here is that instead of "having your favorite game being imported onto the console game that you own," it is more like "when your favorite ero-game is imported, you HAVE to buy all of them"